The Washington Post has a major article today on an Iraqi General who was tortured to death. If anyone needed more proof that torture was an accepted—and indeed encouraged--form of interrogation under the Bush administration, here it is. If this isn’t enough proof, what is?

Generals are clearly subject to the Geneva Convention. Generals don’t “fall through the cracks” and then get beat up by accident by out of control guards. While he might have had information that would have helped locate some resistance units, this was no “ticking bomb case. “ Instead this was standard operating procedure.

Indeed, it is clear from the investigation that followed that the only “mistake” the interrogators made was in killing the guy as opposed to keeping him alive to torture some more. Only his death warranted further investigation. One can only assume that any success in obtaining “cooperation” would have been rewarded.

There was a system in place that did this. Our political and military leaders ordered the creation of this system. We the taxpayers paid for it. There is no reason to assume that this is not still going on and that we are not still paying for such actions.

To the extent that a US citizen knows this and does not try to stop it, he or she is an accomplice to it. There is blood on millions of hands. Our hands.

Oscar Chamberlain - 8/3/2005

I hope that the trial does indeed help. As I said in an earler post, there are fine people in the military who do not want this to be business as usual. We would not have the information that we do have if they were not there. I hope that they are the people who prevail.

John H. Lederer - 8/3/2005

Let's make it clear that this is not permissible behaviour. Let us criminally prosecute anyone who does such things. Charge them with murder, because that is what this is...uhh, wait:
====
Chief Warrant Officers Jefferson Williams and Lewis Welshofer, Sgt. 1st Class William Sommer and Spc. Jerry Loper are charged with murder in the Nov. 26, 2003, death of Iraqi Maj. Gen. Abed Hamed Mowhoush. Investigators said Mowhoush suffocated while he was being interrogated at a 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment base in western Iraq.
====

Their lawyers are contending that they did this on orders. Their commanding officer was reprimanded for the soldiers under her command exceeding their written instructions.

The lawyers for the charged soldiers contend that they were acting within orders. Presumably we will know much more from the trial.

Ed Schmitt - 8/3/2005

The outrage over torture seems most justified, but it is interesting to compare it to the level and nature of outrage over the loss of Iraqi civilians from the initial bombing. I suspect that what many folks (not necessarily Oscar, but folks whose views are represented by Democrats outspoken about the torture issue but initially supportive of the war) find outrageous about this issue as opposed to that is a sense that torture seems the tool of an uncivilized, inhumane nation, while precision bombing seems somewhat more "advanced." This is not to say that Oscar or other readers who opposed the war were not outraged at the loss of civilian life, but it would seem that this outrage is of a different character. It is about the self-image of the U.S. more than it is about this general or those incarcerated at Guantanamo. All of this said, there is a lot of blood to go around.